A Twitch of Black Tail
by Fayalargo Winterwoelfin
Summary: Not even love can keep a cat from leaving. It's only a twitch of black tail, before she is gone. SoiFongYoruichi, UraharaYoruichi
1. Crying after you

You should despise her for her betrayal.

But, in the end, all you can do is cry.

Despite what you have been telling yourself all these years, you still love her as much as on the first day you saw her.

You break down at her feet, the violent energy of the fight dissolves, and you finally feel her presence again. It wraps around you like a comforting blanket, protecting you from the freezing cold of solitude and warms your heart like a bath in the sun. And suddenly it's as if the loneliness has never existed.

When she takes you in her arms, you want to resist, hurt her back, like she has hurt you, want to reject her, like she has rejected you, and want to betray her trust, like she has betrayed yours. You want to shout,scream, accuse and offend, but with shock and mounting happiness you realise you have turned to a helpless child in her arms.

In a matter of moments she has brought you back to the times when you have been as close as sisters and she has still been there.

As if nothing had happened in between.

… And you don't understand.

How can she hurt you so much, forsake you, and then come back as if it hadn't meant anything to her?

Desperately you wonder if she doesn't know what you have suffered, what ugly feelings towards her had time to ripe inside your heart, in how many shreds it has been ripped by her disappearance?

But you hug her desperately and suddenly it doesn't matter. She may be the cause of all your pains – but the remedy as well.

Feeling her light and lean body, smelling her scent, the caress of her presence enveloping you, you only know that you love her and that finally you are whole again.

---

The following days, you almost can't believe you see her every day. It feels like returning to your own body.

It's just that this time you know how fragile what you once thought imperturbable is. Although she makes you forget, deep in your soul, the pain of a hundred years is still there.

When she leaves, it'll come back.

But for one week you feel like the person you are, and want to be.

------

The morning she leaves you wake up to find she isn't beside you.

You dart to the window, search the courtyard and streets with your eyes, empty this time of morning.

You see the graceful body of a cat nearing the end of the street, striding confidently and aware – of course she knows that you have woken up and that you are watching her. But does she know what you feel for her? The hollow in your chest where your self is pulled out a little more with each step she takes? Of course your soul is too strong to become a hollow, but at this moment, you think you understand what a hollow's feeling. And why it's a mercy to be slayed.

She knows that you are watching her with your heart in your eyes, that it's desperately crying after her to stay –

And she doesn't even look back.

You stifle an anguished wail and you have to grip the windowsill only to keep standing, when all you feel is your chest imploding with pain. You want nothing more than to haste after her, beg her to keep you with her.

Only you can't.

Not even love can keep a cat from leaving.

With teary eyes you watch her, far, at the end of the street, shrinking into the road.

The last thing you see is a twitch of black tail, before she is gone, beyond the corner and away.


	2. Waiting

The night air still holds some of the heat of the day, but it has cooled enough that Kisuke isn't bothered by wearing his green coat. He strolls through the empty streets, accompanied only by the sound of his wooden sandals on the pavement. He reaches a corner, the alley opening out to a small square in the midst of which there is a tiny park – really only a few trees and bushes set around a puddle of water. He stands, tipping his head back in an attempt to look beyond the rim of his hat at the small cut of sky that is visible between the high buildings around him.

The few stars are pale and gloomy.

With a sigh he closes his eyes, imagines how the sky has been those nights –

With a shock of burning energy, the gate once again rejects his touch. The physical pain isn't much more than a jolt, a lingering stinging in his fingers. But the truth it represents, that he really can never go back, is like pushing a stake right through his heart.

His eyes fly open, still looking at that dark grey sky, he searches for a blinking star to take comfort in, but the cruel night in this world provides only a few dull spots, and, like the gate, sends his longing right back at him.

He desperately wants to howl his loneliness to whatever stars there are when even the moon is absent.

He casts his eyes down, and continues his stroll, trying to seem as if wandering aimlessly through the nightly city.

He told the children that he was going out to buy juice. Tessai frowned suspiciously, but Kisuke brushed his former Fuku-taichou's worry off cheerfully. Tessai's gaze hardened as he had looked away, because he understands and doesn't approve.

But what is he to do? On lonely nights like this, he can't help himself; he can't bear to stay in the shop with people that aren't her. These times it's even painful to visit the copied training area under the store. It provides many happy memories – which are, in the end nothing but memories, used to fill the weeks, months or years until she visits again.

She loves him enough that she left soul-society _because_ of him. But in her personality as well as in her other form she is a cat and he's a dog; a stray dog, but still, a dog. The painful truth was that she never really left _with_ him.

And all that he can see when he looks at that bleak sky of the human world is that twitch of black tail, just before she is gone.


End file.
